102416-any-word-on-server-merges-page-2
Page 1, Page 2, Page 3, Page 4 Content To say that Wildstar is boring from a PvE perspective based on adventures and dailies is like saying that a waterpark is boring after only visiting a tiny section of the park. Dungeons are by far the greatest content in the game right now. The issue is people want it handed to them on a "silver" platter (see what I did there?). I have to say that I was getting very frustrated with dungeons when I started because I was pugging so you know what I did? I started adding people that were good in my PUGs to my account friend list and brought them all together for some good dungeon runs. Within 2 weeks I was 4/4 on dungeon attunement and have actually started my own raiding guild. We are up to 30 (yes, 30 in 2 weeks) members and have almost 15 at 4/4. I think this is a feat that not everyone can accomplish as I am very optimistic and energetic about getting these groups moving, but to add people to your list that seem to be good and making a solid 5 man team is not hard to do at all. The fact that you can play with people on other servers by /invite playernamehere@stormtalon is a great feature to take advantage of if you are struggling in PUGs. I've actually convinced 7 people to transfer to my server to be part of my raid team. Dungeons are possible if you put in the effort to form a good team and have okay leadership. | |} ---- ---- Yep cause the same players that complained are the same ones that didn't. Keep blaming players like it was ultimately up to them to initiate the opening of more servers. The game is failing because of many other reasons btw. I also like the people completely oblivious to servers that are ghost towns because there's aren't so it isn't an issue | |} ---- ---- With that being said, what are you playing right now/going to play? | |} ---- Odd I thought it was advertised as a sandbox, w/o telegraphs...I wonder what beta I was in....musta been watching the wrong dev speaks too...sneaky Carbine. | |} ---- It's always like that. WoW forums are the same way, incidentally. It's always the "waaaah the world is ending" crowd that's the loudest. Things are nice and good on Avatus. Actually, couldn't be better. | |} ---- ---- Ranks right up there with "I rolled an immobile caster, and now I'm mad that I'm an immobile caster" that you see on every damn thread in the esper forums. | |} ---- Yes the funny thing is I see lots of 'Wildstar is Amazing and WoW is DoooooOOOoOoOOOoOOOOOmed' posts on the WoW Off topic forums. Seriously EVERY forum is like this, its kind of sad. If you want to enjoy a game don't spend too much time on its official forums. | |} ---- I'm on Dominion side on Avatus and agree that things seem fine on Avatus. Also, for what's it's worth, I checked the NA server status when I logged in last night (11PM eastern), and saw 5 servers on Medium, whatever that means: Stormtalon, Avauts, an RP server (Evindra, I think?), and two of hte pvp servers ( I'm assuming one was Pergo, but I can recall the other.) Sure, population is down on many servers, but the game isn't totally dead - I do wish free server transfers were available from low-population servers to the medium-population servers though. It wouldn't force a server merge, but would give folks the option to move if they wanted to check out greener pastures before they quit entirely. | |} ---- Also keep in mind the fact that a server listed as Medium has about (or more) as a server that was displayed as High during launch. The fact that the population is much more spread out through the zones reduces the stress on the server tremendously (so they can fit more people without issues). This allows them to increase the server limits, and they have probably updated the status displays accordingly. | |} ---- ---- ---- ---- Evindra generally isn't. I kind of have to take server-death posts at arm's length because Evindra never really ever went to highpop, but never really dropped below medium. Maybe we just have more people that enjoy the game at pace rather than trying to race Enigma. I think the elder gem requirement thing is what's dropping server populations. I don't think there are a lot of un-subs taking place, but as more people got to 50, they started hitting that cap and then playing something else for a while. In regards to that binge-playing comment, it's kind of true. When people were racing to 50, they were on all day every day. Once they hit cap, if they don't want to do anything else in the wide sea of this game, they just log off for the week. So you've got periods of heavier activity, then you're down to the people taking it easy and leisurely and the people leveling alts. And a lot of people don't hang out in Thayd or Illium, not when they've got a nice house and things to do at the house. The game's not dead, as you say, nor is it going to be soon with how astronomical the CREDD sales were. I don't think it would hurt, though, if Carbine fixed the elder gem system so that you get gems less quickly, but there is no cap. Then people probably would be on all the time. Which might help if people are really distressed about what their server pop in the client says. At the very least, it'll drive up the queue population. | |} ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- I don't think they (we) mind it, but I'm sure that buying another copy due to ridiculous region lock and lose all the toons and credd already in our possession is not on our plans. | |} ---- ---- ---- This would create far more issues than be helpful. There would then be complaining about the slow EG gain, the fact that the poopsockers could pass casuals, etc. It would drive up the queue pop though! :P Really though, people should just chill about their server pop. They did this for the starting areas during launch. The instancing is referred to as "phasing" iirc. | |} ---- ---- I get why it's brought up, and though I wouldn't say Wildstar needs to learn a LOT from WoW that it hasn't already, I agree that it probably doesn't need bashed. It's a 10 year old masterpiece of MMORPG engineering. I wouldn't go back now that I have Wildstar (I've been too spoiled by the speed and difficulty), but I don't wish it ill will and I don't look down on people who want to still play it. WoW may not be for me anymore, but for ten years it has reigned supreme. Any game would give their eyeteeth to have been that successful for so long. If it hadn't been for Wildstar, I'd still be anxiously and patiently waiting for WoD. But I suppose that we wouldn't have so many people here if it was perfect. I'm sure some people hate the game. I just can't get that vitriol together; Blizzard makes a great product that's simply being slowly enervated by the passage of time. | |} ---- Everquest died so hard it spawned 2 sequels. OMG. Faerie Sorcerers and Frog Warriors! It's the END OF THE GAME! | |} ---- ---- DFJ brought up that you don't have to. You could have a surname added to your name or use the original server as an "address" of sorts (Spenser@Evindra). It could happen. I don't know how much this matters to me, though. As stated, I'm on Evindra. There won't be a RP PVE megaserver (we are the only RP PVE server). Can't see the harm in rolling together all the PVP and PVE servers in their respective regions, but I doubt (and hope) Evindra would also be packaged in. Nobody on a regular PVE server wants to deal with us RPers. That said, I think the issue is more sharding, people not playing for very long in a week due to EG cap, and people usually hanging out in housing. All contribute to the servers looking a lot less packed than they are. | |} ---- ---- Just leave it alone...enjoy what you do. If the place burns to the ground at least you can say you had fun. And having fun is all that really matters if someone else does not well you can't help that. | |} ---- Evindra-ite here too. I do NOT want to be merged with anyone. One of the advantages of separate servers is it allows distinct communities to form. For me anyway, that makes it worthwhile. | |} ---- Alts, Crafting, Dailies, Housing. Yep. Lots of fun to be had right there. | |} ---- I hope you get Pago-tized. | |} ---- ---- You can't work up enough plat in this game to pay repair bills, reset costs, and dyes, without being in the PVE endgame, without selling CREDD? | |} ---- ---- As long as you don't troll the RP, I still think we're hands down the best server out there. Never had any problem getting a group together. Last night, at about 3 am, I got one other guy to essentially table-run the Farside group mobs, even the 3+ ones. Guy was awesome! :D | |} ---- I will be playing ArcheAge. | |} ---- ---- ---- Are you waiting for free mode, or unwilling/unable to buy into paid alpha access right now? | |} ---- The buddy of mine who has this complaint didn't start from "I rolled an immobile caster". He started from "I want something that feels like a spell caster". He didn't want someone with a pair of pistols. He didn't want someone who carried around a pair of defibrillators and used them for both healing and DPS in melee range. He wanted someone who casts magical spells. Turns out, in this game, there's exactly one class that feels like that, and it happens to be immobile. That fact contributed to him quitting. (And he really did, which is why he isn't on the forums complaining himself.) | |} ---- ---- ---- ^ this | |} ---- Also, how is this on the players again/now!?!? :o I distinctly recall the devs saying it'd be easier to setup those NEW servers than to just increase the server-capacities and toss a couple/few more box-rigs into the clusters... because most players were yelling to just increase the server-capacities. I even recall all the posts that the DEVs made practically screaming at the gamers to jump on the new servers, and several gamers not wanting to go or reluctant to go due to progress they'd already invested -- even to the point devs started tossing out free realm-transfers. Even got to a point where white knights started screaming at others for the devs for people to migrate (even recall some posts of people that were first on realms during Headstart feeling pushed to go to new realms). Heck, as far as I know, there's still people screaming for new PvP RP servers that haven't happened... so it's not like the PLAYERS are at all getting what they want when it comes to making calls on what servers happen and which ones don't. Then ironically, even though the devs said they were going to make new servers, somewhere people started chanting these are super-servers with mind-blowing high caps, and why "low" in WS is super-mega-mondo-high in any other game. So, as far as I know, caps weren't raised, and it was the DEVs idea to make NEW servers, while many players just wanted the capacity increased. Kind of strange how often the goal-posts in this community keep shifting, and how the finger keeps getting pointed at whichever group is the most convenient. :ph34r: PS - WS could do well to adopt cross-realming as seen in WoW... forced mergers are going to have issues when multiple users/guilds have the same names, and other such problems. (One big one I can see, is a person that's stockpiled CREDD at a cheap price on one realm, being merged onto a realm with high selling prices... causing somewhat of an unfair market advantage.) | |} ---- You ever played a NC Soft published game? That's cute. | |} ---- ---- A merge within a merge. Mergeception. | |} ---- ---- Ditto. Because of work, family, pets and life, I am not able to get online until 9:30-10pm each night. I try to squeeze in a few hours before going to bed since I have to get up at 6am every day. I'd love a chance to spend a Saturday or Sunday in front of the computer to play Wildstar all day :) I already have to force myself off at night so I don't sleep at my desk all day at work. Also like you, I have 2 friends that are traveling this summer and will rejoin towards the end of August. Out of 6 of us that joined together, only one has quit and it was because he lost his job and can't justify his subscription right now. 3 of us (myself included) are on every night and surrounded by other players as we go through our quests. I will say this though, I rolled a new toon on another server (Exile side...but don't tell!) and the intro area was pretty quiet unlike with my previous toon. So maybe some effort to get fresh meat in the door is needed :) Anywho - Love the game, not quiting anytime soon and I sure don't want to see anything dumbed down to make people happy. Fix bugs, maybe make dungeons more rewarding for those needing phat lootz, but don't make this WoW! | |} ---- ---- If subs are so unpopular how does ARR have 2 million and it was released in 2013(?) ? Subs are still viable. Wildstar can still maintain that payment model. If this was f2p I wouldn't play it.. Edited(lol) | |} ---- If it was F2P, you wouldn't have to buy it :P But I get your point. If WildStar was F2P, then I would be a lot less likely to continue playing. I hate most F2P games and players. | |} ---- ---- LOL yea I wouldn't play it is what I meant to say. | |} ---- ---- ---- They didn't overestimate anything. They were forced to open more servers than they wanted so people could play the first week without flooding the forums with threads about how they're quitting because of a lack of service due to queues. But since that issue dead and buried and servers are now stable (or stagnating), mergers would only help things. | |} ---- ---- ---- This is a good point that I hadn't considered. My preferred solution would probably be "multiply the character cap by the largest number of servers to be merged". The other thing I think they could do is provide choices about how merges work. Instead of merging two low-pop servers with each other, merge low-pop servers into medium-pop servers, and give players a choice in how it goes down. Like, for each alt on a low-pop server, you can designate which medium-pop server that alt goes to. Or to put it another way: they could implement merging servers as something like "free transfers for a month, then we pick a default for you and turn off the server". | |} ---- That is not what it means, and I'd love to see a quote from carbine to back up your claims on the rest. | |} ---- I do remember that free transfers worked wonders for GW2 a few months after launch. Carbine should really get on that... unless of course they want to milk the transfer fees longer. <_< | |} ---- Penny-wise, pound-foolish, so the saying goes. | |} ---- | |} ---- ...But by saying nothing about this issue they are saying just that. They're also indirectly saying that they are like every other MMO developer and that when it comes down to the almighty dollar they will never side with the players. *cupcake* I've seen this shit time and time again it just baffles me how history repeats itself. Instead of being proactive about it and manning up, the devs just keep quiet and pretend nothing is wrong. It's like Wildstar got invaded by Zenimax all of a sudden. Carbine, if you're reading this I want you to remember the following shit-storms really clearly (in no particular order of fail): 1) Age of Conan 2) Dark Age of Camelot post-Trials of Atlantis 3) Ultima Online post-Trammel/Felucca 4) Warhammer Online 5) Shadowbane 6) FFXIV (first release) 7) TERA - North American release 8) SWTOR 9) Elder Scrolls Online Probably a good half dozen more not worth listing. All of them had serious issues with server populations. All of them had developers that failed to take action fast. | |} ---- |} Posted 19 June 2014 Information from two weeks after launch. It's outdated. Stop referring to it. | |} ---- |} I somehow missed the "spin is just not what we do here" part the last time I saw this post. Absolute comedy gold, I think cougar should have explored a career as a sit-com writer instead of as a stand-in PR guy. | |} ---- Man what? Now you're being kind of unfair. Spin has been amazingly lowkey in nearly all departments. And if you're talking about this post, it was perfectly accurate on June 19. | |} ---- You should enable scripts, I edited my post before you posted the quote but you got the old version. Hardly being unfair. If you're going to make a declarative statement like that, it needs to be accurate in the future too. And yeah, I know it was from June 19th, when the bit about low = medium was semi-fresh and some people were seeing it for the first time and eating up the spin. The problem is, it still tells us just as much nothing then as it does now, except some defenders try to run with it to mean even more than was ever implied by that statement. | |} ---- ---- You're right, and it's been posted on the forums previously. That doesn't change what some players are seeing when they log in, and that doesn't change what players feel will fix those things they're seeing. The whole point to being vocal about it is the squeaky wheel gets the grease. This wheel needs grease. A big oily tub of it. | |} ---- The reply thing has nothing to do with scripts (I think?) but with me clicking the button and then being distracted by another browser tab before actually typing out my post. :P Anyway, I strongly disagree with the "needs to be accurate in the future too" part. He was talking about the situation on June 19. That's how I understood it, and what you're interpreting into it here I honestly consider your spin on his post. As for the "low = medium" part... it's also true. Even when my server was "low" on primetime for the first time a few weeks ago, there were tons of people. Now? Not so many. However, just thinking about it logically, the issue is clear to anyone: There is no server state below "low". So low can be 500 players... or 5 players. Maybe a percentage-based indicator would have worked better here. Assuming low can be from 0-33%, I'd say my server has gone from 35% to maybe 10% recently. None of this contradicts Cougar's post, and I'm seriously not seeing any spin here. But as I said: It is problematic for different reasons. Three states total simply don't give an accurate feedback to the player. | |} ---- I'm not trying to spin his post, just highlighting that phrase for emphasis. Stating what you do as a company/group needs to mean something for longer than a month or you just don't have any reliability. That is exactly the problem that many defenders were trying to exploit to pretend the servers were better than they were. "You don't KNOW the server is empty or only has 5 people, it says low, it could have 9,999 people out of 10,000 to count as medium and it would still say low because the servers are so advanced!" <- actual post by lethality. All the low = medium thing does is give them more wiggle room about what low really means in terms of numbers, and removes any precision from it. | |} ---- Nope, I still won't let you get away with calling this spin so easily. First, let's define spin: I'd consider "spin" the act of stating something in a way that makes facts look more positive than they are. Similar to euphemism. However, this requires an alternative way of stating it, that would not be as euphemistic. Now, what would that way be in this case? Low-Medium-High is the genre standard for evaluating server states in MMOs - Fact. Wildstar's capacities and thus thresholds for Low-Medium-High are bigger than the average MMO - Fact*. Servers were still very full even at the high end of "Low state" a few weeks ago - Fact. Now... how, in your opinion, should Cougar have phrased his statement to make it "less of a spin"? I'm seriously not seeing it. He stated the facts as they were at the time. Facts without omission or embellishment can, in my understanding of the word, never be "spin". Literally. What you're complaining about is the spin that rabid fanboys put on these simple, non-spin facts. You can't blame Cougar for that. *(no reason to disbelieve this no matter how cynical you are, considering the small number of initial launch servers) | |} ---- ---- Underlined* part is subjective and thus not fact. But that's not what we're on about. Italic part: the omission was in not telling us what low medium high actually mean in terms of numbers. Here are all the assumptions that you as an average player make as you read his statement: "As far as the "lows" and "mediums" that people are seeing, don't get confused or psyched out by the names. Our individual realm capacity is larger (whoa, thousands more people per server!) than what you are used to (I'm used to WoW, he must mean WoW), and as long as you are finding people to play the content with you that you enjoy (yeah, my 15-man guild!), who cares what it says there (I'll ignore the population rating!)? At one point I talked about removing the "low" "medium" and "high" nomenclatures to say something else (maybe: off peak, populated, and busy) (even he doesn't think low medium high tells us anything! why not just tell us the actual numbers then cougar?) but it felt too much like "spin" and I ultimately backed away from it (I am sure glad he's not spinning us!). Spin is just not what we do here. (what a trustworthy guy, he says they don't spin!)" Omissions: what game's servers are wildstar's being compared to, what is the actual capacity of the servers, what are the actual thresholds for low medium high. Without those, it's all spin. | |} ---- Not really, since at the time there wasn't a single "my realm is dead" QQ thread. You saw it (or rather didn't see), I saw it, everyone saw it. Not subjective. The closest we had were "why is my realm showing as low". Which the post was meant to address. Rest of your post is irrelevant, to be honest. We (I) weren't discussing what the so called "average player" can read into it, but how it could have been phrased in a less spinny way. As for the omissions: Actual numbers were never going to happen. "No spin" doesn't entail breaking every established rule of information policy. Point being: The post was (as I already described) moving within the confines of accepted MMO information policy etiquette without trying to embellish facts. That's as "no-spin" as can be reasonably demanded in my opinion. There was no way to be even less spinny without providing numbers, and there was no way to provide numbers. Ergo: Minimum spin possible. If you're honest with yourself, you have to admit you're setting unreasonable standards here. Look at the spin levels in 99% of the rest of the industry. I mean... Microsoft is telling us always online DRM consoles are a feature. EA is telling us Dungeon Keeper Mobile was controversial because they innovated too hard. Let's keep some perspective here, for Pete's sake. | |} ---- Very subjective, as what does "full" mean? Full to capacity, full enough to not feel empty, full enough to find groups, full enough to talk in /zone and get responses? So you're saying that spin is okay because other companies spin, even when this company says "spin is just not what we do here". You could just, I don't know, not trust their spin either? And where is this "no way to provide numbers" coming from? Other companies do this often. CCP gives you an exact to-the-minute count of the number of people logged into EVE. Other companies release sales/sub numbers to brag/advertise that their games are successful. Hell, even Digital Extremes bragged about their "4 million Tenno" number when it turned out to be 250k people who each had 20-odd Tenno each on average. I didn't set the standard. Cougar did, by making that statement. | |} ---- Full means "full enough" as in "no one complained". In contrast to today, which is "tons of people complain". "Low" June 19 was more than enough in the majority's minds. "Low" July 29 is not. No, I'm not saying spin is generally okay, what I was saying is that you're being unfair. Why? Because you made a sardonic comment about Cougar being a spin-master, when (in my opinion) he included the minimum amount of spin possible. As for EVE: Ok I admit I had no idea about this. That's pretty neat. A rough low-medium-high indicator is still the genre standard though, and thus using it does not constitute "spin" for me. If it does for you, I'll refer you back to the start of this whole debate, i.e. that I believe you're being unfair/unreasonable. | |} ---- And now the goalpost is moving. First it was they don't spin, and now it's that he was spinning as little as he could. It constitutes spin for me if he says "Yeah I didn't like the low medium high and considered replacing it but decided not to because it would just be more confusing" when all that low medium and high are doing is summarizing the numbers. Want to avoid confusion? Numbers. Want to skip non-quantified things being compared to dubious other non-quantified things (our servers are larger than the ones you're used to)? Numbers. Numbers numbers numbers. Do you have a smartphone? Does it have a battery display? Did you install an application (or does it naturally come with one) that gives you the exact percentage of life left, rather than just estimates on a small battery icon? The numbers avoid confusion and possible errors. (This is not saying your phone is spinning anything to you, simply pointing out how summarizing things leads to margins of error and estimation instead of precision). If he hadn't claimed to not spin, I wouldn't be pointing out his spin. | |} ---- Nope. Might want to check my initial post again. What I then proceeded to do was talk about how I could not spot the spin-aspects in the parts you were bashing. Language always has a certain degree of vagueness. You are demanding zero vagueness, which is pretty much impossible outside the realm of mathematics (i.e. raw numbers). I admitted I didn't know games that provide numbers actually exist (like EVE). I claimed (and still claim) that this is not the standard. Ergo, you are holding the post to unreasonable standards. | |} ---- tends to be easy for EvE because... its one..single..server. it is neat, but since they only have the one server, its really easy to see how many people are logged in at that time. with Wildstar and x number of servers, the idea is nice, but unworkable. its like comparing apples to grapefruit. it is unworkable on a multi server set up without core changes to server reporting and that should be fairly obvious to the person suggesting it as a yardstick. just more smoke and mirrors from the doom and gloom side | |} ---- ---- EVE: "Server reports: 53,350 players playing. Output to player: 53,350 players playing." wildstar: "Server reports: 1,100 players on Widow, 6,500 players on Pergo, 3,500 players on Pago, 4,800 players on Evindra. Output to player (1,100 + 6,500 + 3,500 + 4,800 = 15,900): 15,900 players playing." How can you possibly say that is unworkable? They're already getting all those numbers AS IT IS, what do you think the realm list showing "low, low, medium" is based off of? Low and medium are just labels for a certain range of values, they HAVE those values. What "core changes to server reporting" would need to be implemented for this? Please, it's clear you have no idea what you're talking about. A simple SUM command and output of data they ALREADY HAVE would accomplish this. | |} ---- It's racist for you to say that all mmo devs can do simple math. Or ableist to say that they all have tools to count how many players are online. One of the two. Check your privelege is what I'm saying. | |} ---- Ahhh crap, they're Californian, aren't they. Yeah, that's my bad. Hey, s-some of my best friends are Californians! We hang out all the time! We hang the ten and catch waves, on the boards of surfing! Cowabunga! R-right? | |} ---- That's just like what a purpleman from purpleland would say. What if you didn't grow up in the purpleschools learning math? How would you feel? We don't know that carbine ever learned math, so you can't just make the assumption that they know math. Stop being so racist against carbine. | |} ---- My purple parents moved here in the 60s, they didn't live here. They never forced math on those peo- I mean, uh, on Californians. Oh man. Uh. I give charity money to Californian math schools all the time, I even retweeted #awarenessforhippies to spread awareness. I'm not part of the problem! | |} ---- Check your privelege. Not all people have money. We do know that carbine has twitter. Plus money from all the subs and credds. But they don't have charity money which they need to have in order to maintain their massive coke addition in addition to going to simple math schools. You should be more respectful of carbine's trans-coke-addict lifestyle. It's theirs to choose and you, as a purple man master race, are in no place to judge them. | |} ---- This is fine with me. | |} ---- I'm sorry, I was trying to help those less fortuna- I mean, oppressed by my brutal purple ancestors. I would give up my math ability if I could, to be more equal like those peo- I mean carbine. I would. I can't help I went to school this way, it just happened, I didn't ask for it. I understand I have no place to judge them, I respect Californians and their lifestyles and their state tanking because accounting needs math and social programs need tax money and it's not adding up for them but even so it's not my place to try to judge them on math. I'll do my best to be more respectful of their life choices. Am I using the right pronouns for them? Do they want to be called something else, carbs, carbinos, carbas? | |} ---- *carbas. Lowercase always. Let me go over a few points that people like you seem to always hate on carbas about. 1. You shouldn't be disappointed in carbas when carbas promises to be hardcore and doesn't deliver, that's classist of you. 2. You shouldn't expect patch notes that are accurate. That's linguist of you. 3. You shouldn't expect class balance. That's ableist of you. 4. carbas' meticulous fixing of issues shouldn't be labeled as "lazy" or "slow" simply because they never happen. They will happen but you're just being a speedist. 5. carbas' identification as hardcore is none of your business. It's what carbas wants to call itself. You should respect that. 6. You shouldn't expect customer service. That's like saying carbas values its customers. That's identity policing and therefore sexist. 7. Expecting carbas to have default mmo things like better handling of factions, quests or pvp is awful speciesist of you. carbas is a hardcore trans-mmo that identifies as a sci-fi mmo that is also half solo. I think if you clear these things up we can have conversations about how this is the greatest MMO ever. | |} ---- Speedism kills. | |} ---- I had no idea the purplarchy was oppressing carbas so much. Thank you for opening my eyes. I will do my best to celebrate carbas for fighting through adversity to take a half-assed dump on my plate and charge me for a full meal. | |} ---- Sorry this kid has played through almost 20 years of MMO releases... Losing subs after the first month is normal. Entire guilds and groups of friends leaving is something entirely different. Especially when they're not leaving for another game. If they get pulled by another game that's one thing. If they leave because the game is boring and offers more bugs and problems than actual fun that's another. The only thing the game really has to offer with AAA quality at 50 is raiding. BGs were/are lacking, daily zone is a last minute scrap together (level 3 starter zone LOL), adventures too repetitive and boring, dungeons are half decent but no one is going to pay a sub to run dungeons. WTF was the strain drop? An entire months worth content drop that can be completed in an hour. Then you can do the same garbage 3-4 dailies every day with no other reason to return to that zone... What a waste of development time. In my opinion Blighthaven should have been the real end game daily zone and got rid of what I hope is the current placeholder daily content. If that stays in the game this is a joke. Re using tiny zones from level 3... Seriously? They weren't good at level 3 why would I want to do them over and over at 50 every day? | |} ---- Or just one. Raiding. Which no one on my server is currently doing because of shitty population and a bunch of small guilds instead of one big one. | |} ---- It's not just the purplarchy, it's the patriachy and matriachy, plus the other races including: white, black, asian, hispanic and korean. Especially korean or as they call them in korea: "Corean." They think they're so special with their chaning of the letter. Little do they know it's my trigger and I can't even | |} ---- When entire guilds leave an MMO together, there's always another game, whether it's a game they were playing before, another game they want to try or a game that's currently in beta that they've already been planning on playing. They're not going to quit a game en masse and then sit on their hands. Guilds are like sharks, they have to keep moving or they die. | |} ---- ---- Widow is bleeding :( | |} ---- ---- Have them Rowsdower folks coming on Warbringer.... ewwwwww. I can't speak for Rowsdower, but Warbringer does not seem extremely low. I find plenty of people in the daily zones, and Thayd is filled with people, even really late on a weeknight. (To be honest I don't mind a merge between the two, just as long as no one on Rowsdower has the name AdrianDenan. ) | |} ---- ---- ---- ---- +10 Holding onto hope Carbine pulls their head out and fixes everything plaguing the game asap instead of trickles of lacklustre content and empty servers. Merge shit, fix shit, do something. | |} ---- Widow isn't any better. Between the split time zones and zerg recruitment guild who's name i wont mention, the server feels more or less barren. | |} ---- Too busy releasing a new BG that nobody's going to fucking play after the first initial week of its release. It'll be a Blighthaven disaster all over the place. Obviously CRB management is terrified of a scope freeze in their internal development processing because if I was in charge of development, I would have held off on all incoming new content to fix the horrendously broken shit that is making people leave in flocks. But, no. Instead they stick by a schedule they wrote probably 2 years ago about what to do after the game releases with the creation of new content no one's going to play at the top of the list. I wouldn't expect much from the team "that listens to its playerbase" (love what they did with the Medal System by the way). | |} ---- ---- I find there's always people around on Rowsdower but not as many as I think there should be. | |} ---- ---- I think the necessary point here is that Wildstar doesn't suck and has been out for only two months. If three years turned that steaming pile of garbage into a great MMORPG, I think it's fair to say it's too early to start nailing up Wildstar's supposed coffin because it didn't keep all the people that tried it at launch. | |} ---- WildStar doesn't suck but the biggest fix it needs to make has to do with Philosophy not design. Also FF ARR is a new game not just a redesign. That's how I feel. Look at 1.0 and the an look at what's there now. They literally destroyed original FF XIV. A Realm Reborn is the relaunch of Final Fantasy 14 with brand new game engine, environment, mechanics and other features. FFXIV ARR is available for PC, PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4. Sure that's how the wiki views it but look at the what's in bold and tell me that's not a new game. My point about ARR is that Wildstar can survive. That is what I want you to takeaway from it. That thing I alluded to that both Blizzard and Square has is Accessibility. That is what Wildstar lacks. I don't think ARR is super amazing but clearly it's doing something right. I know it's 2 months old which is why I haven't complained about the bugs. The Philosophy and inaccesible nature is what's hurting the game. Not the Core Design or Core Mechanics. Edited July 30, 2014 by Balf | |} ---- My point EXACTLY. There is nothing wrong with Wildstar that a little long-range planning and short-term repairs won't fix. First, ditch the "hardcore only" mentality. Don't make it EASY, don't skimp on mechanics and actual gameplay. There is NOTHING wrong with those things. Moderate the more "casual" content and change the "Medals For Lewts" to something more equitable. For God's sake, throw the fake "time gated content' in the trash and let people advance how they want. And please ... learning dungeons. Less potent versions of dungeons and adventures with commensurately smaller reward. Hell, to me, seeing the content is often it's own reward. I *really* want to see Malgrave Trail. I *love everything* about Malgrave, but man, listening to people talk, you'd think it was as a big a waste of time and effort as Housing. (yes, that's a joke) Catering to a less hardcore base does NOT mean changing the actual game-play mechanics. Those are what makes something "hard" or "easy" ... not hiding our AMPs and Skill Point progression behind RNG bullcrap and time-gated nonsense meant to achieve nothing except slowing people down. | |} ---- People don't want to hear this though. They keep saying silly things like it can gain people by catering to a super hardcore niche. PEOPLE LEFT BECAUSE THEY FELT THE GAME WAS TOO INACCESSIBLE YOU WINGNUT! (lol not you) Even a few of the people who are raiding think it's silly and are feeling the impact now that they want to start 40 mans. 40 needs to go though. That was something even I was excited about but that's another can of worms waiting to open up down the line. Especially in a Attunement system. | |} ---- Maybe it's my game history. Wildstar's attunement is a damn sight easier than what I used to go through, so I don't look at it and shudder at its inaccessibility. It doesn't even feel "hardcore" as far as attunement goes; I mean, there's an elder gem cap, or it'd be done in a few days. I'm all for changing the system to reflect time input rather than an artificial gate, but I know the inevitable backlash. You say Wildstar doesn't have to be easier, just less grindy. If people are looking at raid attunement with shock and horror, the raid difficulty isn't going to make them happy either. The raid bosses are hell on wheels. People that can't clear silver attunement because they can't put together even five people that will play with them aren't going to walk into the Genetic Archives with a pug and succeed. And we'll have what we have all over again, people complaining that they can't clear the raids, that they're only for hardcores, that this is Carbine's philosophy and that the game will never succeed this way. I'm all for tweaking initial attunement and killing the stupid attunement pre-Datascape, but I know what's coming. And the problem with that is, Wildstar can't be like FFXIV:ARR or WoW. There are already FFXIV:ARR and WoW in the world. Wildstar needs to exist on its own terms in some capacity. And that is going to keep some amount of people out of the game, necessarily, but people who might not stick around for long anyway. Time gates aside, without being viciously difficult, Wildstar blends into the background. At the moment, it's about the most difficult PVE experience in the MMORPG world. I'm very wary of dialing up WoW's Wrath playbook, because I saw what it did to WoW. And I'm a fan of FFXIV:ARR, but I know that the people interested in FFXIV:ARR aren't going to drop that game and come to Wildstar unless the skill gate comes down, too. FFXIV:ARR players aren't averse to grinding; they'll turn FATEs for days. I'm of the mind that Wildstar doesn't need a broad philosophy change as much as a very detail-oriented sweep. Right now, certain factors don't play to their strengths. The artificial Elder Gem cap is one of them. Wildstar's crowd doesn't mind having to constantly run dungeons over and over as long as they're inching their way along towards success. You don't even have to remove the gem requirement for attunement. It's the artificial cap that gets its core audience caught, stopped, having nothing they can do to "progress". They're mostly probably still subbed, but why log in if they're capped? They could make that an easier and more enjoyable pill to swallow by simply removing the cap for anything but dailies and adding elder gems that can surpass cap to dungeon and RBG loot. I'm simply of the mind that outright removing the system kicks the can down the road and into the next highest wall. First, people complained about leveling being too long and too boring and that it was just a gate that needed to be removed. Then, they complained about renown, because PVPers weren't generating it and had to go grind it up. Now they're complaining about the attunement to raiding. After attunement, they will complain about raiding itself. However, nothing should be handed to anyone. You've got people saying they can't possibly get all the silvers they need for attunement right now, and that should be removed as a requirement. It doesn't make sense; getting silver is a breeze compared to a raid. It's really not what's killing Wildstar (if you can consider a bunch of people who tried it at launch and didn't like it leaving the game to be killing it). If anything, all Carbine really needs to do is occupy their players' hands. That way, everyone with an active account would be logged in at once, rather than just logging in, doing their dailies and/or raid, and then logging out for a while. People will scrape and claw forwards for months and feel like they're making progress, what may in fact be hurting the game is that they decided to take a relatively newer WoW idea (JP and CP) as a model for an endgame currency, trying to artificially cap progress to slow the players down. They may actually be better served looking at older models of endgame currencies, ones that didn't cap but were harder to grind up. That could inform a lot of what they do. So much of their endgame is group-based that they HAVE to look at ways not to make it easier or less grindy, but to keep people hooked on a feeling rather than trying to keep their attention by dangling some keys in front of them while they sit in the waiting room, waiting to get back to progression. | |} ---- ---- I can't speak for the EU, but Evindra doesn't need a merge - at least not currently. We're as healthy as ever and more folks coming over every day. | |} ---- New guild logo? (check image name if you dunno what it is) | |} ---- ---- That's actually probably a good point. I don't PVP, and even I thought the PVP people had some pretty good points. You guys will have to dissect how effective the new patch is at solving those problems. Still, I don't want anyone to think I'm glossing over all the attunement issues. I think it's fine to have it and to make people work for a key, but there are things they can definitely do to make it better. Hopefully, those get addressed within the next month or so. It's kind of weird. For a while, I was a little disappointed when every single server but ours was going high at peak. I don't think Evindra ever went high. Now, we're one of the most consistently populated servers. All those people who say RP servers aren't worth the trouble, our server may be in the best shape, figuring how you judge places like Pergo and Stormtalon. | |} ---- Actually, I'm curious to know how many will know what this is and from which game it comes from. Even if they don't know the game itself, which series it comes from and what the symbols represent. | |} ----